A Stockton man whose teenage sister was brutally raped and murdered three decades ago has filed a lawsuit calling for the execution of convicted killer Michael Angelo Morales.

Morales' execution has been delayed through a series of legal claims that have also blocked lethal injection for all death-row inmates in California.

In 1983, Morales, now 52, was convicted of the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell, also of Stockton. He was convicted of lying in wait and torturing Winchell with a hammer and knife.

Her brother, Bradley Winchell, has filed suit with the state Third District Court of Appeal urging the court to order state prison officials to adopt a lethal injection single-drug protocol, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation announced Thursday.

"This delay and denial of justice is entirely unnecessary," Kent Scheidegger, Winchell's attorney, wrote in a statement. Scheidegger is legal director of foundation.

"The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has ample authority to resume executions promptly," Scheidegger said. "The failure of that Department and its Secretary, the Respondents in this action, is an abuse of discretion, an obstruction of the law, and a violation of the constitutional rights of the victims' families."

Morales' 2006 execution was stopped when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel found the state's three-drug lethal injection process to be unconstitutional.

The argument was that prisoners put to death were not anesthetized properly and could have suffered excruciating pain during the process.

Several deficiencies ordered to be fixed at San Quentin State Prison by Fogel, including training for the execution team and improved building lighting, have been addressed with the building of a new lethal injection chamber.

But the department continues to have in place a three-drug mixture to carry out executions, Scheidegger said.

"At any point in this process, CDCR could have announced a one-drug protocol, encouraged by the federal judge who had been reviewing California's three-drug protocol, and gone forward with the execution of Morales and several other murderers on death row," Scheidegger said. "The purpose of the action we have initiated today is to secure a judgment ordering the state to stop sitting on its hands and do its job."

Terry Thornton, deputy press secretary for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said she could not comment on the lawsuit because the department hadn't been served yet.

In response to why the department hadn't changed to a one-chemical injection, she provided a document that stated the department has reviewed all aspects of the lethal injection process and was guided by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held up the three-chemical process as not being cruel or unusual punishment.

Amid more than 724 death row inmates, Morales is one of about 14 inmates whose sentences have been fully reviewed, according to the legal foundation representing Winchell.

And their death sentences remain on hold by litigation over the lethal injection method. More than a dozen men sentenced to death from San Joaquin County remain on death row, six of them for more than 25 years.

Bradley Winchell declined to comment for this story, and Morales' attorney could not be reached for comment.